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Making the Purchase

Auctions | Private Sale | Claiming | Breeding Your Own

 
There are several ways to buy a Standardbred racehorse: at an auction, through a private sale, or by “claiming.”

Auctions

At an auction the horses are sold to the highest bidder. Some sales feature only yearlings (1-year-old horses). Other types of sales include “mixed” sales, which offer active racehorses, broodmares, stallion prospects, and yearlings.

Pluses: Sales offer large numbers of horses, and most at mixed sales are ready to race. You and your trainer will have the opportunity to physically inspect each horse before it goes through the sale ring.

Challenges: They are held infrequently, so if you’re ready to “go to the races” you might have to wait weeks or months for the next auction.

Private Sale

A private sale brings one buyer together with one seller. An owner may want to sell for a number of reasons: he wants to buy a different horse, to dissolve a partnership, to sell his racing stock when it turns age four, or just because he feels like it.

Pluses: These sales are immediate, and since horses are “traded” frequently, your trainer probably already knows of a few that might be for sale immediately.

Challenges: If you are buying a horse at another location it’s a bit more difficult to inspect that horse, although your trainer might ask another trainer, located where the horse is, to inspect it for you.

Claiming

A claiming race is one from which a horse can be purchased for a pre-determined price right out of the race. A qualified buyer–who must first employ a trainer–puts in the claiming price before the race, and the title to the horse changes at the start of the race. The “old” owner gets the purse and the “new” owner gets the horse at race end. Claiming is often the best option for novice horse owners, because it permits them to get in the game immediately.

Pluses: Racetrack programs are full of claiming races, making each printed racing program is like a catalog of racing prospects–priced at various levels. Also, a claiming horse is already racing, and can start in a race for you the very next week.

Challenges: You won’t have the opportunity to inspect the horse, close–up, before you claim it; your trainer’s powers of observation are the key. Also, since title to the horse passes to you at the start of a race there is a very small chance that it might be injured during the race.

Breeding Your Own

Beyond purchasing a racehorse, there is another way to enter the Standardbred business–buying a broodmare, mating it to a stallion, and raising your own horse. The top young racehorse prospects are sold at auction each year for handsome sums, which give the possibility of breeding a potential star its allure. Any profit from the sale of a yearling (if you chose to sell it), and the enjoyment of winning races and purses (if you choose to keep and train it) are a long way off. For these reasons breeding horses is often less appealing to a new owner.

The challenges of breeding include the fact that a horse can’t race until it is 2 years old, and expenses before it ever races include the payment of stud fees, stakes payments, and pre– and post–natal veterinary care. Some rewarding advantages, however, include having a hand in the foal’s destiny–from conception to his racing career, and some consider this mating, foaling, raising, training, and winning process to the ultimate thrill. Most, however, purchase a “ready–made” racehorse and get right to the business of racing and winning!


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Standardbreds
FAST FACT:
Almost every racehorse, whether in a claiming race or not, is for sale; sometimes trainers simply approach each other to inquire whether a horse might be available for sale.